Herculaneum, Past, Present and Future by Charles Waldstein; Leonard ShoobridgeReview by: C. K.The Classical Weekly, Vol. 2, No. 20 (Mar. 20, 1909), pp. 157-158Published by: Classical Association of the Atlantic StatesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4385990 .

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THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY 157

REVIEWS Herculaneum, Past, Present and Future. By Charles

Waldstein and Leonard Shoobridge. London: The Macmillan Co. (1908). Pp. xxii + 324.

$5.00. The contents of this book are as follows: a

Preface, by C. W., pp. vii-xiv; a description of the Io heliogravure prints, i color print and the 48 half-tone plates, pp. xvii-xxii (a single plate often contains a number of 'figures') ; Introduction, 1-53;

Part I, The Past and the Present, 55-13I, divided into four chapters, as follows: Topography, 57-84, The Inhabitants of the District and Herculaneum, 85-96, The Earthquake of 63 A. D. and the Erup- tion of 79 A. D., 97-I24 and the History of the Site since the Eruiption, 125-131; Part II, The Fu- ture, divided into these chapters: Reform of Ex- cavation, 135-I46, Before Excavation, 147-159, Dtur- ing Excavation, I6o-i68, After Excavation, I69-I83;

Appendices, comprising, I Documents relative to the International Scheme of Excavation, 187-254, II Passages from Ancient Authors referring to Her- culaneum, with Translations, 255-270, III List of Principal Objects which can be identified as coming from Herculaneum, 271-296, IV Guide to the Villa Suiburbana, with accompanying Plan, 297-305, V Bibliography of Herculaneum, 306-318, and Index, 319-324.

In pages 1-I2 of the Introduiction Professor Wald- stein warmly maintains that further excavations at Herculaneum promise better results than may right- fuilly be anticipated from exca-vations elsewhere in the world. His arguments are (i) the splendor of the finds already made there, although but a small part of the city has been uncovered or reached at all. This point the authors and publishers make clear by the magnificent illustrations of the book, which give a large array of objects which, in the judgment of the authors, were found at Hercui- laneum. This feature of the book, suipplemented as it is by the Appendix, giving the list of the principal objects which can be identified as coming from Her- culaneum, constitutes in reality the most instrtuctive part of the book, thouglh even here the work must be uised with caution, since, as Professor Waldstein himself points out, in a postcript to hlis Preface, the authors differ in a number of ascriptions from the compilers of the Guida del Museo Nazionale di Napoli, issued in I9o8; they ascribe to Hercu- laneum various objects, especially objects in gold, whose provenience the authors of the Guida give differently or do not venture to give at all. Further, the authors fail to make clear that almiiost withott exception the sculpttures fouind at Herculanieuiii be- long to the Roman, not to the Greek period, havinig been made within a century or so of the destruction of the city. This failure comes from their over- anxiety to emphasize the Greek character of the city, and makes their descriptions of the various objects figured in their plates often very misleading. (2)

The burial of Herculaneum in 79 was sudden and complete. Pompeii's agony was long drawn out; its people had time to carry off valuables; further, Pompeii was not very deeply buried. At Hercu- laneum, on the other hand, there was no time to carry off valuables; statues fotind there were on their bases or near their bases; the marble seats of the theater were found in situ in 1738, whereas those of the larger theater at Pompeii had been car- ried off. Further, argues Mr. Waldsteiin, the very mud at Herculaneum had wonderftilly preservative qualities; "glass is not melted, marble is not cal- cined, and, above all, . . . rolls of manuscript, though carbonized or discoloured, are not damaged beyond the possibility of their restoration to a state ill whiclh they can be read". (3) Whereas Pompeii was distinictly devoted to buisiness, to the neglect of matters of culture (no mantuscripts have been found there), Herculaneum was not specially de- voted to trade, but had a leisure class with time for culture; in one villa alone about 8po manuscripts were found. It does not seem to. occtur to Mr. Waldstein that his own argument that the people of Pompeii had opportunity even during the erup- tion to carry off whatever they valued and found it easy to excavate later, estops him from drawing inferences from the absence of this or that kind of valutables at Pompeii. (4) Herculaneutm was, if not a Greek settlemiienit, more strongly affected by Greek culture than was Pompeii. The few paint- ings found there are of exceptionally high merit; the bronzes are priceless both in themselves and in the fact that they help to show tus how far the everlasting marble copies come short of their bronze originals. To this topic, the Hellenic character of the people of Herculaneuim, the authors recur in Chapter II of Part I, pp. 85-96, without, however, it seems to me, proving their contention. The rest of the Introduction (15-53) deals with Professor Waldstein's project for an international excavation of HercuLlaneum, a theme from which he canniot keep his mind very long in those parts of the book which he contributed himself (the main part of the book, all that requires real research or an approxi- mationi thereto, seems to be the work of Mr. Shoo- bridge). Appendix I (pp. I87-254) gives documlients, consisting of letters, newspaper reports, telegrams, etc., relating to this scheme. Inasmuch as Professor Waldstein's project had been officially negatived a year or more before this book saw the light, and inasmuch as late in I908 again the Archaeological Commission of Italy approved Professor De Pedra's report that excavations at Herculanieumn do not promise importanit results, and that the work at Pompeii should be continued, it is a pity that these documents (some of which are painfully naive and untactful) were ever putblished at all. One can hardly take seriously what seems to have been Pro- fessor WValdstein's main argument in support of

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THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY

his scheme for an international excavation of Hercu- laneum, to wit, that no one nation could suipplv the sum needed to carry on the work. When one finds that the amouint needed annually is but $200,ooo, and thinks of the outlay on the Panama Canal and simi- lar national tundertakings, he can but smile at the simplicity which would lead anyone to suppose per- sistently for five long years that this argument would be taken seriously. Further, the suggestion repeatedly made by Professor Waldstein that such an initernational excavation wouild make for inter- national good-fellowship seems emotional rather than specially logical or sound.

The conitents of the rest of the book are indi- cated well enough by the outline given above. We have here, on the whole, in spite of some crudities of style, a distinctly readable account, based on good authorities, of the destrtction of Herculaneumn in 79 A. D., of the subsequent sufferings of the site, of the excavations and the finds made there. The account is in no sense exhaustive (the Preface de- clares that there was no design to make it exhaus- tive) but is sketchy and popular, drawing its value chiefly from the fact that it is the most available account of the excavations in English and, as said above, from the truly splendid illustrations. Ap- pendices II-IV, however, will have their tuses even for the more serious student. In Appendix III, which gives the list of the principal objects which, in the judgment of the authors, can be identified as coming from Herculaneum, references are very wisely given to the pages of the Guida del Museo Nazionale di Napoli in which the objects are dis- ctussed; the ordinary reader will naturally content hiimself with the ascription implied by the printing of the illustration in this book, but through these references, the more serious student will have the chance of keeping himself from going too far astray.

On the whole, then, one wishes that there were in this book less dreaming and more of sober and prolonged research. One more point of detail may be noted here, to illustrate what I have in mind. On p. 7, in connection with the statement made about the preservative quality of the mud which overwhelmed Herculaneum, it is asserted that the bronzes found at Herculaneum "have the most deli- cate patina preserved with a freshnless sometimes approaching the quality of their original production". WVith respect to this, Professor F. B. Tarbell, in a review of this book in The Classical Journal 4. 143,

points out that some of the Herculanetim bronzes have utndergone considerable repairs and that Winckelmann long ago suggested that they were fur- nished with a modern patina.

Part II of the book (pp. 135-I83), which deals with the proper conduct of the excavation of Her- ctulaneutm, makes a very curious impression now on the reader, since it is written, most exuberantly,

in the present tense exactly as if the excavations were in fact in process. Certain phrases in the nar- rative are a bit unfortunate, for they might be taken as criticizing contemporaneous methods of keeping records of finds and of preserving the objects found, criticisms to whichl few, if any, important excava- tions in progress within the last decade have been justly liable. C. K. The Trachiniae of Sophocles, with a Commentary

Abridged from the Larger Edition of Sir Rich- ard C. Jebb. By Gilbert A. Davies. Cam- bridge University Press (I908).

In his abridgment of Jebb's edition of the Trachiniae Mr. Gilbert Davies embodies almost in toto the introductory matter contained in the larger edition. He omits some of Jebb's details in his description of the foremost characters of the play and also the comparison between the Trachiniae and Seneca's Hercules Oetaeus. Jebb's discussion of the episodes of the Trachiniae as portrayed in art and his excursus on Sophoclean diction are like- wise not included in the abridgment. In his treat- ment of meter Mr. Davies adheres closely to Jebb, except that he does not print the words of the vari- ous choruses in his metrical scheme.

In the preparation of his notes Mr. Davies has followed consistently the precept he has laid down for himself in his preface-to omit too little rather than too much. He has, as a rule, condensed dis- cussions of variant readings, but in allother respects has been decidedly chary of omissions. It is a pity that in treating of the Heracles legend in lyric poetry in his introduction (p. xii) he did not see fit to mention the myth as it appears in Bacchy- lides 24. I65 ff. (this Ode was found after Jebb's edition was published in I892). On the whole, however, Mr. Davies's little book should prove de- cidedly useful for college work. It is fuller than the Campbell-Abbott edition which up to this time has been much used by undergraduates. Because Mr. Davies has omitted the English translation which Jebb inserted in his edition he should deserve thanks from the teacher and because he has avoided the intricacies of textual criticism he must earn the gratitude of the student.

NEW YORK CITY LUCILE KOHN.

In THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY, I. 22, Professor W. E. Waters reviewed briefly Michaelis's Die Archio- logischen Entdeckungen des Neunzehnten Jahr- hundertes. A translation of a second revised edi- tion of this book was brought out last year by John Murray in London and by Messrs. E. P. Dut- ton & Co., in New York, under the title A Centurv of Archaeological Discoveries (Pp. xxii + 366; $4.oo net).

In the English edition all of the German book appears except the ten pages of Quellenangabe. For this omission one feels regret. It is interesting to

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